Perryville Battlefield

On October 8, 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed just west of Perryville, a small market town located southwest of Lexington in the commonwealth’s central bluegrass. The climax of a hard, six-week campaign that shifted the focus of the western war from northern Mississippi hundreds of miles toward the Ohio River, the battle ended inconclusively. Although a tactical Confederate victory, Gen. Braxton Bragg abandoned the hard-won field overnight to his numerically stronger foe and commenced a retreat that eventually led back to Middle Tennessee’s Stones River at the end of the year. Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Union Army of the Ohio soon followed. Although the widespread Confederate dream of adding Kentucky to the Confederacy did not die at Perryville, the last realistic hopes of accomplishing it faded like the autumn leaves that fell on Bragg’s army during its sullen retreat.

-Kenneth W. NoeOn October 8, 1862, cannon explosions shattered the rural peace of this tranquil countryside and the death moans of young soldiers. Perryville became the site of the most destructive Civil War battle in the state which left more than 7,600 killed, wounded or missing. The park museum tells of the battle that was the South’s last serious attempt to gain possession of Kentucky. The battlefield is one of the most unaltered Civil War sites in the nation; vistas visible today are virtually those soldiers saw on that fateful day in 1862.The Perryville Commemoration, an annual event occurring every October, features authentic weaponry, clothing campsites, and demonstrations of infantry, artillery, cavalry, and a civil war reenactment. 2:00 P.M. Fight for the Gibson Farm Part 1

“The Fight for the Gibson Farm”

Although the Battle of Perryville actually started 2 miles south of here with an early-morning skirmish, the major fighting did not begin until 2:00 PM when Confederate General Daniel Donelson’s Brigade attacked with three veteran regiments toward the Widow Gibson Farm. Only one Confederate regiment, the 16th Tennessee, actually succeeded in going that far. Quickly recovering from the surprise, Union troops (the 24th Illinois and the 2nd, 33rd and 50th Ohio regiments) plugged the gap and forced the Tennesseans back. After being reinforced, the Confederates renewed their attack and eventually captured the small farm.

Military camps allow you to experience the camp life of the typical Civil War soldier. There you are able to observe ration issues, mail call, pay call and drill.This wooden fence reminded me of the Revolutionary War sites we visited in Boston, Massachusetts."Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.


But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

- Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, The Gettysburg Address. Breathtaking Drive HomeThe Kentucky River